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Panel B:Intimates, Friends and OthersAbstracts |
| Diana Adis University of New South Wales d.adis@unsw.edu.au |
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"Narratives of Japanese intimacy: examining nakedness and touch in Japanese families"The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the broader cultural context in which intimacy is felt and communicated in Japanese familial relationships. Common discourses of Japanese relationships, such as ishin denshin (heart-to-heart communication), lead to a perceivable lack of touch in intimate relationships. However, specific discourses and practices of the body suggest a significance of touch in intimate relationships often overlooked by such discourses of heart-to-heart communication. This paper addresses such discourses and practices of the body in familial intimacy such as they emerged in my 2005 fieldwork. I refer to various participant observation settings (in particular, pre-natal and post-natal parenting classes) with an emphasis on how familial intimacy is taught and enculturated. The narratives of class participants and facilitators highlight the importance of the body in familial relationships. In particular, this paper focuses on touch (sukinshippu) and naked association (hadaka no tsukiai) as that which perpetuates and enhances Japanese familial intimacy. |
Michael Shackleton Osaka Gakuin University mshackleton@hotmail.com |
"The Significance of Friendship in Contemporary Japan"‘Classic’ fieldwork in Japanese villages, companies and similar bastions of the ‘group model’, frequently highlights how tomodachi relationships between individuals of the group are seen to be essentially subversive. In other words, membership and loyalty should not seem to depend on liking each other: there is a job to do together, and a common identity to maintain. Friendship/tomodachi relationships are thus established ‘on the outside’ (fan clubs/religious associations, etc.). Fast forward however to students at university nowadays, and the most common reason for ‘dropping out’ or switching universities is ‘tomodachi ga nai’. And as we look at the ‘furi-ta’ culture of university towns, it seems that ‘tomodachi’ are more and more ‘in’, and the fusty old ‘group model,’ and its hierarchy of relationships, is increasingly ‘out’. ‘Giri’ is giving ground to ‘Ninjo’. This paper examines: a) identity: role versus self (‘Who am ?’ versus ‘What am I part of?’); b) the relevance of ‘sentiment’ in new forms of association, and hence the application of psychological concepts within anthropology; c) fieldwork: placing behaviour within friendship groups (eg. youth groups) in terms of the rest of their members’ lives and the wider social context. Also, micro-analysis of discourse; d) historical and cross-cultural sources for the social significance of ‘friendship’; e) the anthropology of contemporary Japan against the backdrop of modernization and similar debates world-wide. |
Tom Gill Meiji Gakuin University gill@k.meijigakuin.ac.jp |
"The Kegare Category: Ritual Pollution and Social Discrimination in Contemporary Japan"There is a school of thought, associated with folklore scholars such as Sakurai Tokutaro and Miyata Noboru, and traceable back to Yanagida Kunio himself, that identifies 'kegare' (ritual pollution) as a master concept in Japanese traditional rituals. It is often associated with death (black kegare), or with blood -- especially the blood of menstruation and childbirth ('red kegare'). So long as the term is confined to folklore studies (minzokugaku), it is relatively uncontroversial. But when cultural anthroplogists, such as Namihira Emiko, suggest that kegare might be a factor in present-day social discrimination -- in other words, that homeless people, foreigners or Burakumin may in some way be viewed as 'polluted' in the Japanese consciousness -- they are roundly criticized by Japanese sociologists, for introducing unscientific notions to phenomena that they believe can be far better explained in terms of traditional Marxist/Weberian paradigms of class or staus. Who is right? This paper will document a decade spent by a foreigner trying to come to terms with the kegare category. |